


Terror

by yopumpkinhead



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Brotherhood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Ignis has a cameo, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-19 16:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13708620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/yopumpkinhead
Summary: Prompto is loud and goofy and turns into an awkward stammering dork when people hit on him - until one suitor gets too aggressive. Gladio had failed to protect his king, but he's not going to fail his friend.





	Terror

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [this gorgeous (and terrifying) art](http://kaciart.tumblr.com/post/167989180983) by [kaciart](http://kaciart.tumblr.com).
> 
> Thank you to my amazing beta Noir!

“There’s twenty crates of canned veggies,” Prompto said around the pen he’d stuck between his teeth as he shuffled through the papers spread on the table. “Ten of jerky, eighteen of canned meat. Two crates of that awful dehydrated ice cream crap - who needs almost a thousand bars of shitty powdered sugar on a stick?”

“Imperial soldiers, apparently,” Gladio answered. “Probably for boosting morale.” He checked the clipboard in his hand against the stack of supply crates the hunters had just finished offloading. They’d found an Imperial supply ship crashed near a half-built base in northwestern Cleigne, and raided it for goods. Just over a year had passed since the Starscourge had plunged the world into darkness, and while the Exineris crew and the remains of the Kingsglaive had done a good job of building safe spaces, feeding all the people crowded into those safe spaces was rapidly becoming a problem. The supply ship was a welcome windfall.

“I don’t think my morale would be boosted very much if all I had to eat was canned meat and dehydrated ice cream,” Prompto said. He pushed some papers aside to uncover Ignis’s latest rations list, muttering calculations under his breath as he added the new food to the sheet.

Gladio turned back to the crates. A smaller box with a sheaf of papers wedged inside sat atop the pile, and he dug out the papers to skim through them. Construction plans, mostly, for the unfinished base, but there were also some official communiqués describing the growing daemon problem in Gralea and warning the officers dispatched to Lucis not to return until things were under control. The dates on the printouts were all from June of last year, and Gladio remembered the hunters saying they’d seen signs of daemons inside the crashed ship. Probably there’d been an infected Niff or two aboard, and they’d transformed sometime on the flight to the base and taken the ship down.

He set the papers down in time to see two of the hunters climb into their truck and drive off. The third had apparently decided to stay behind: a muscular redheaded man named Siducio whom Gladio remembered vaguely from a few runs to rescue stranded refugees and the fact that he’d asked Iris last week if Prompto was single. Siducio tossed a salute to his departing friends, then turned and sidled toward Prompto with a swagger in his hips and a gleam in his eye.

Gladio watched him, fighting a grin. Prompto turned into an adorably awkward, stammering mess when people flirted with him, and while Gladio wouldn’t ever tease him to his face about it, he found it hilarious to watch. Siducio came up behind Prompto where he was reaching across the table for one of the papers on the opposite side, and bent over him, bracing his arms to either side of Prompto and pressing his body against Prompto’s back. Gladio lifted his clipboard to hide his smile; Cindy’d done something similar to Prompto once, back before Altissia, and Prompto had squeaked and turned bright red and hadn’t been able to say anything coherent for ten minutes straight.

Except this time Prompto didn’t squeak. He made a very small, soft noise, not quite a gasp, and went utterly still.

Gladio blinked, the smile fading. That wasn’t Prompto being awkward. That was Prompto being _absolutely terrified_.

Siducio, though, didn’t seem to realize the difference. He leaned forward, his chin resting on Prompto’s shoulder, and murmured, “Whatcha working on? Can I help?”

“Uh—” Prompto said, the word too high and breathy. His hand, gripping the edge of the table, had gone white-knuckled, but he hadn’t moved at all. Like he was frozen, like he wasn’t a deadly fighter perfectly capable of defending himself against an overly-aggressive suitor.

Gladio had no idea what had gone so wrong, but he wasn’t going to stand there and do nothing. “Hey, Prompto!” he called. “Need to borrow you for a sec.”

Prompto turned, very slightly, in Siducio’s arms; Siducio shifted to let him go and Prompto was across the room and at Gladio’s side in an instant. He was deathly pale, his freckles standing out like bruises on his cheeks, and his eyes had gone red-rimmed and shining. The smile he plastered across his face was faker than the bodies in a girly magazine, and he spoke too fast as he said, “Sure, what do you need?”

Gladio hadn’t actually thought that far ahead, but didn’t want to make an already-unpleasant situation worse by admitting he just wanted to give Prompto an excuse to get away from Siducio. Not without knowing what the actual problem was, at least. He glanced around, his eyes falling on the box of papers rescued from the supply ship, and he grabbed the communiqués from Gralea.

“Here, take these to Iggy,” he said, and handed them to Prompto. “Tell him it’s those reports from Commander Ludereper he was looking for.” _Ludereper_ was one of the code words Gladio and Ignis had worked out with Noctis years ago, when Noct was fifteen and just moving into his apartment in the city. It meant _play along,_ and while it was supposed to be for situations where Noctis was in trouble, Gladio had no doubt Ignis would pick up on it and not let on that he wasn’t expecting any reports.

“Sure,” Prompto said again, and all but bolted out the door toward Ignis’s makeshift office four buildings down the street.

Siducio took a step after him, as if to follow, so Gladio said, “Hang on, I still need help hauling these crates.”

Siducio frowned, throwing a longing look after Prompto, but reluctantly joined Gladio by the stack of crates. Gladio set down the clipboard and motioned for Siducio to help him lift the closest one. As they hauled it from the loading bay to join the rest of the crates on the back wall, Siducio said, “So, does your sister not know you’re dating him, or what?”

_So much for not being obvious about rescuing Prompto._ Gladio snorted. “I ain’t dating him,” he said. “I just watch out for my friends.”

They set the crate down on the floor, and when they straightened, Siducio fixed him with a narrow-eyed look. “I was just flirting, y’know. I wasn’t gonna…” He shook his head, and Gladio heard the note of genuine hurt under the surface anger. He didn’t doubt Siducio had meant no harm, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t caused any.

“You spooked him pretty bad,” Gladio said, and couldn’t quite keep the growl out of his voice. Siducio looked away, chewing his lower lip. Gladio added, more gently, “Look, I know he’s loud and obnoxious, but really, the kid’s shyer than a wild chocobo. You wanna flirt with him, you gotta go way slower than that.”

Siducio’s eyes flicked to him, then away again, almost shy himself. “So… what should I do?”

“Give him a few days,” Gladio said. “Then take it real easy. Give him space. Don’t sneak up on him like that.”

Siducio nodded reluctantly. Going slow went against everything Gladio knew about him, but either he was interested enough in Prompto to do it, or he’d find someone else more receptive to his advances.

They hauled the rest of the crates out of the loading bay in silence. Prompto still hadn’t returned by the time they finished, so Gladio picked up his clipboard and started going over the papers Prompto had abandoned on the table, updating the final counts and distributions. Siducio hovered at the door for a second, then said, “Look, next time you see him, tell him I’m sorry?”

“Yeah,” Gladio agreed, and Siducio left.

*           *           *

When Gladio got home that night, Prompto was already there, sitting cross-legged on the bed and playing _King’s Knight_. It was a testament to how shaken up he’d been; he knew better than to waste precious electricity powering a phone whose only use was to play games, now that the cell carriers’ central relays had died. He didn’t look up when Gladio came in, but his shoulders tensed.

Gladio pretended not to notice, kicking off his boots by the door and crossing the two whole steps to the tiny kitchenette to fill a glass of water from the tap. He would’ve rather had a beer, but like everything else edible, beer was strictly rationed, so water it was. At least they hadn’t had to ration that yet. Water in hand, he propped a hip on the counter and watched Prompto in silence.

The apartment was a tiny box, half the size of Gladio’s bedroom in the Amicitia family home in Insomnia. It had a single narrow closet, a bathroom with a shower cubby so small Gladio’s shoulders brushed the walls, and barely enough floor space in the main room for a lumpy old couch and a double bed. Prompto and Ignis shared the bed, partly because they were built along slimmer lines than Gladio and therefore fit better the rare occasions they were both there, but mostly because the two of them were rarely home at the same time. Ignis worked late and often slept in his office, and Prompto, like Gladio, spent most of his time out with the hunters, rescuing refugees and searching for supplies. Gladio slept on the couch, although if there had been enough floor space he’d have just given up on the damn thing and put a sleeping bag on the floor; it would be less uncomfortable.

Prompto didn’t look up, just kept tapping away at his phone, the tinny sounds of the game strangely loud in the quiet of the apartment. Gladio finished the water and set the glass in the sink, then crossed the room to sit on the bed next to Prompto. “So,” he said quietly. “You wanna tell me what that was about, earlier?”

“Nothing,” Prompto said, way too fast. His shoulders were so tense they were up around his ears. “It was nothing.”

“Sure it wasn’t,” Gladio said. Prompto kept staring at his phone, but though the screen beeped and flashed insistently as his character took damage, he didn’t seem to notice. Finally the game chimed with the death message, the screen going black while it reloaded. Gladio gently plucked the phone from Prompto’s hands, shut it off, and set it aside. He said, “ _Nothing_ doesn’t fuck you up this bad. Did that guy hurt you?”

“No!” Prompto said, and shook his head. “No. I—I mean, he didn’t do anything. I barely even know him.”

“Was it ‘cause he’s a guy?” Gladio’d thought he’d seen other men flirting with Prompto and Prompto hadn’t cared - or rather, he’d gone just as awkward and stammering as when Cindy did it - but maybe Prompto hadn’t realized the men were flirting.

Prompto shook his head again. “No. No, it’s just…” He swallowed and shuddered, wrapping his arms around his stomach, his head bowing over his knees like he wanted to be sick.

Carefully, Gladio put a hand on Prompto’s back, then, when he didn’t react to the touch, wrapped his arm around the kid’s shoulders and pulled him against his side. Prompto shivered but let him, keeping his head bowed while his hands plucked at the bracelet around his right wrist. As it shifted back and forth, Gladio caught a glimpse of the barcode tattooed beneath, and abruptly a horrible thought struck him.

Prompto hadn’t told them much about what he’d gone through after he’d fallen from the train last year. He’d said only that Ardyn took him to a Magitek production facility where he’d learned the full truth of his origins and killed a couple of experimental daemons, then when he’d escaped the facility, Ardyn had recaptured him and taken him to Zegnautus Keep. Nobody had pressed him for more details at the time, because they’d all seen how shaken he was. They’d all seen the ugly bruises and cuts and abrasions that covered every inch of exposed skin. They’d all assumed they’d have time later, after Noctis took back the Crystal and restored Lucis.

But the Crystal had taken Noctis instead, and Ignis and Gladio had been focused on getting out of Gralea and back to Lucis, and Prompto had just… never brought it up again. But now, watching the way Prompto fiddled with the bracelet, feeling the tension in him, remembering how Ardyn had been a little too grabby with him the one time he’d camped with them and how Siducio had pressed up against him in the warehouse…

“Was it Ardyn?” Gladio said.

Prompto went very, very still beside him.

“What happened?” Gladio asked, and had to fight to keep his voice neutral, to not growl or yell outright.

For a long moment Prompto said nothing, though his breath came in painful-sounding hitches. Finally he said, “After Noct… After I fell off the train, I was going to walk back to the port in Succarpe. But there’s… it’s not that far from Ghorovas Rift, y’know? So I bought snow clothes in a shop on the coast. I was wearing them when the MTs took me to the magitek facility, and I was still wearing them when… when _he_ caught me again.”

Prompto stopped for a minute, scrubbing his nose on his wrist and sniffling. His voice was thick when he continued, “He said I was just… just another MT, just one of many. That nobody would know which MT was me, unless I was wearing my Crownsguard uniform. He… he pinned me down, like _that_ ” —and Gladio remembered how Siducio had leaned over Prompto on the table— “while he sliced off my clothes with a knife.”

Prompto’s voice broke on the last word and he curled in on himself, shivering. Without thinking about it, Gladio scooped him up, pulling him onto his lap and wrapping his arms close around him. He realized halfway through the motion that maybe trapping Prompto like that wasn’t the best idea after what the kid had just told him, but then Prompto buried his face against Gladio’s chest like he was trying to burrow in. Gladio tightened his grip and just held him for a minute, but there was one more question he had to ask, as much as he hated himself for doing it. “Did Ardyn… Did he—”

Prompto shook his head. “He kind of… implied he couldn’t,” he said, the words hoarse and muffled by Gladio’s shirt. “I didn’t… I didn’t get why, but then we saw his… his daemon form, and...” He trailed off, then added, very quietly, “But I think… if he could have, he would’ve.” His voice broke again and this time he didn’t fight it, gasping like the words had choked him.

“Stars,” Gladio muttered, because there wasn’t a curse in the world half strong enough for this. Prompto’s gasps became sobs, hard and ugly, like they were being ripped out of him with a knife. There was nothing Gladio could do except hold him more tightly.

Clarus Amicitia had once told Gladio that the hardest part of being a Shield wasn’t physically protecting the king, or even the thought of dying for him. It was watching someone you cared about suffer, and being unable to do anything about it. “You’re an Amicitia,” his father had told him solemnly. “Protectiveness and loyalty isn’t just your duty, it’s in your blood. But there’s going to be times when you can’t protect someone - when what’s causing them pain isn’t anything you can fight. All you can do then is be there for them. Be the strength they don’t have in that moment.”

For Clarus and Regis, those times had been King Mors’ death, Queen Auela’s death, and then Noctis being Chosen, though none of them had understood at the time why that last one was so painful. For Noctis, those times had been Regis’s death, the fall of Insomnia, and Lunafreya’s death, and Gladio knew all too well that he’d failed Noctis each time. He’d tried, but all his usual ways of bolstering Noctis, of being his strength, had backfired and only hurt Noct more. Now, Noctis was trapped inside the Crystal and Gladio could do nothing for him - but he could be Prompto’s strength, and he could do it the way he should’ve done for Noct.

So he held Prompto, smoothing a hand over his hair and rocking him gently while he cried. And when Prompto’s sobs finally slowed into the uneasy rhythm of sleep, Gladio didn’t let go. He just shifted until they were both lying down on the bed, Prompto still curled tight against Gladio’s chest. Eventually Prompto’s breathing smoothed out, deepened, and as he finally relaxed, Gladio let himself drift off to sleep.

*           *           *

The next morning, Gladio woke up to find Prompto tucked against his side, his head pillowed on Gladio’s shoulder and his hair stuck to the side of his face. Across the room, Ignis lay on the couch, out cold with an arm draped over his eyes; Gladio had a vague memory of Ignis touching his shoulder in the middle of the night and Gladio muttering something about Prompto having a nightmare.

He shifted, trying to wriggle into a more comfortable position without waking Prompto, but when he glanced down again, Prompto’s blue eyes were open and blinking up at him. A bright red blush spread from Prompto’s cheeks to the tip of his ears, and he looked away. “Uh,” he whispered, his voice ragged from last night’s sobs. “Sorry for, um.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Gladio said. He ruffled Prompto’s hair and smiled. “And… thanks for telling me.” _For trusting me_ , he didn’t add.

Prompto nodded without looking up. “Maybe, uh. Don’t tell anyone else?” he said. “I mean, it’s not—it was a year ago. It’s over. I’m fine.”

It was a blatant lie and they both knew it, but Gladio wasn’t going to call him on it. “I won’t tell,” Gladio promised. “But you ever need an out again, just let me know.”

“Thanks,” Prompto whispered. He yawned, then stretched, his spine popping, and peered over Gladio’s shoulder at Ignis asleep on the couch. “Think we can make breakfast before he wakes up and tells us we’re doing it wrong?”

Gladio snorted. “No bet.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who burned the eggs last time,” Prompto said, and elbowed him. There were dried tear tracks on his cheeks and his eyes were still red and puffy, but the smile he flashed Gladio was real.

Gladio grinned back. “Fine, you do the eggs this time. I’ll be in charge of toast.”

“Deal,” Prompto agreed. He pushed himself up and climbed over Gladio out of the bed, stumbling into the bathroom to wash his face. Gladio dug out the pan and turned on the stove while he waited, and by the time Ignis woke up to scold them for setting off the smoke alarm, Gladio and Prompto were laughing and arguing about how much pepper to put on the eggs.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the formative book series of my childhood was the Coldfire Trilogy, by C. S. Friedman. Its villain protagonist is a vampire who feeds on human terror and pain. Due to the bargain he made to gain his powers, he couldn't do anything that could be considered - from whatever perverse angle - an "act of life", but that didn't stop him from playing on his victims' fears of exactly that anyway. There was always something extremely unsettling about that for me, and I found it interesting to apply the same idea to Ardyn here.


End file.
